Individual Religious Beliefs Among Junior School-Age Children

Introduction. This article presents the results of an empirical study of the problem of child religiosity formation. Throughout the entire period of the development of the psychology of religion, one of the important areas of research has been the development of the problem of the formation of children's religiosity. It was hypothesized that the formation of an image of God is influenced by the features and nature of relationships in the family and the image of the most preferred parent with whom the child has a closer relationship. In the course of the study, we drew on the theories of Russian and Western colleagues: Piaget, Harms, Rizzuto, and others. Content. In order to identify the relationship between parent-child relationships and the image of God formed in the minds of primary school-age children, an empirical study was conducted on the basis of two Sunday schools, using the projective methods “Me and My Family” and “Draw God”. The sample was sixty-two drawings of thirty-one children aged 6 to 12. The result revealed a correlation of child-parent relationships with the image of God formed in the minds of primary school-age children in most of the cases examined. Deification of the parental image was naturally reflected in most cases when correlating drawings of the family and drawings where the child tried to represent God. Conclusions. It can be stated that the most preferred parent has an influence on the formation of representations of the image of God in the child of primary school age. Deification of the parent's image was naturally reflected in most cases in the correlation of the family drawings and the drawings where the child tried to depict God. We can state that the most preferred parent has an influence on the formation of representations of the image of God in a primary school-age child. The study partially confirms all the theories related to the formation of the image of God in children, put forward by Western psychologists about the influence of father and mother on this process.